Hops can be used in many different ways to impart intense and varied hop aromas to beers. As a raw ingredient or pellet they produce fresh and complex aromas. However, with a drive towards efficiency using a liquid hop product, brewers need to know how and if they can reproduce the full range of flavor and aroma using these products. There are a couple of key concepts that a brewer needs to understand when it comes to how a full hop flavor is generated by hops in beer.
More than just oils
The way in which a raw hop or pellet develops flavor and aroma is hugely complex. We all know that the different hop oils such as myrcene, linalool etc play a key role in delivering these but simply providing these oils alone is only half the story. In most cases liquid hops products focus heavily on delivering these oils. This can be a good solution when it comes to enhancing or supporting hop flavor already in the beer. But when it comes to being a source of full and natural hop flavor they start to struggle.
The absence of the natural hop material becomes evident and a “missing” flavor and aroma is often described. This is because in the natural product there are many other components that interact with your beer and each other to produce the natural flavor and aroma. Bitter acids, terpenes, sesquiterpenes, thiols, polyphenols are among a long list of missing components in most liquid hop products, all of which can be necessary to achieve a natural full hop flavor.
As a brewer, if you are looking for a natural, full hop flavor similar to that which you would achieve using raw hops or pellets, then you really need a liquid hop product that contains all of the flavor aroma and other valuable components that you would find in them
With great dispersibility, comes great flavor
Oils are not easily soluble in water and when you are assessing liquid hop products it is important to understand this. It means that getting the flavor and aroma from them into your beer is challenging. The ethanol in beer helps by dissolving some of the flavor and aroma molecules but with such small amounts of oils and ethanol compared to the volume of water in the beer, the interaction between the two takes a long time.
Raw hops are actually a very inefficient source of flavor and aroma, and although pellets are better, they still take time. Liquid hops then provide the flavor and aroma molecules much more freely to increase the flavor transfer, but it is not as simple as that. This is where an understanding of dispersibility comes in.
No matter how much oil you add and how rigorously you agitate it to encourage it to disperse within your beer, it will still not fully dissolve and you will likely damage your product. Some if not all of it will end up sitting on the top of your beer or evaporate, providing low to no flavor or aroma benefit. You may not even always be able to see this as it often gets hidden in the foam, but if you are not careful you are paying a lot of money for oil that is not really impacting your beer.
Liquid hop producers can help the dispersibility of their product by adding non-hop derived carriers or solvents. But if you’re looking for a hop natural solution this is obviously not ideal. What you need is a liquid hop product that is able to deliver the flavor and aroma components in a way that they are so small that they naturally fully disperse in your beer and stay dispersed. This would mean that they remain in your beer and offer a full and highly efficient transfer of flavor and aroma to your final beer. This would shorten your production time significantly and this process is even likely to make the flavor and aroma more stable in your beer after packaging for a longer shelf-life.
SPECTRUM: A genuine liquid hop product for full natural flavor
Out of the available liquid hop products that we and other producers offer there is one notable candidate, that meets the criteria needed to be a genuine liquid version of a hop pellet, and able to offer the full and natural hop flavor. SPECTRUM is characterized by the fact that all valuable components such as bitter acids and aroma components (terpenes, sesquiterpenes, etc.) are present in a free-flowing hop extract that fully disperses in cold beer or deaerated water by simple mixing or stirring. It does not use any non-hop carrier or solvent but due to some very clever technology, it remains fully dispersed for as long as you need to. The result is that by using SPECTRUM not only can you develop a more natural and fuller hop flavor, comparable to what you would create with a hop cone or pellet. But you can do this faster, more efficiently and in a way that means your flavor and aroma will be more stable for longer.
The graph shows the similarity in the aroma of a hopped beer with SPECTRUM compared to pellets in the static and dynamic process, as well as the comparison to a non-hopped beer.
Adapting your aroma and flavor
When you add SPECTRUM during your brewing is key to getting the flavor and aroma result you want from it. Ultimately a combination of early and late dosing during fermentation is often advisable.
- Early Addition: The earlier the aroma is added during fermentation, the fruitier the beer becomes.
- Late Addition: The later you add SPECTRUM, the grassier and more floral the beer will be.
As SPECTRUM also brings bitter substances into solution in addition to the aroma components, the dosage should be added during fermentation or at least before the end of fermentation.
Starting with SPECTRUM
We have written a full whitepaper about using SPECTRUM and if you are looking to introduce SPECTRUM we highly recommend you read it or even contact us directly for advice. As a simple guide, we recommend replacing pellets with SPECTRUM, at an exchange rate of pellets to SPECTRUM of between 5 to 1 and 8 to 1. The exact rate for your beer will need to be found and can depend on many factors including the beer you are brewing and your equipment.
We always recommend an iterative approach:
- Start with 25% to 50% Replacement: Begin by replacing 25% to 50% of pellets with SPECTRUM in an established recipe.
- Gradually Increase Replacement: From there, you can gradually increase until you find the sweet spot between perfect flavor and maximum efficiency.
Remember we are always here to help.
